The present invention relates to networked computing using objects and, more particularly, but not exclusively to a method, system and apparatus for permitting interactivity between at least two objects over a network. The invention is applicable to the Internet and to the World Wide Web.
The World Wide Web is the first, and currently the only mass-appeal user interface to the Internet. Technically, the World Wide Web consists of two standardized parts: the server and the browser, which together enable service providers to create web sites that can be accessed by a remote user via a browser. Conceptually, the World Wide Web creates a powerful user interface paradigm, which is often called the Storefront Model. In this model, a service provider's web site can be thought of as a store's storefront, and visiting a web site is like visiting a store. Using a browser to visit one site after another, even in the case when this is done by following links, is like going from one store to another, i.e. the user goes into a store, the user leaves the store, the user goes into another store, the user leaves the store, etc.
While powerful, the World Wide Web's storefront paradigm makes it very difficult to involve more than one entity in any interaction. The case of e-money and Internet-based shopping in general illustrates this problem. Many attempts at e-money have been tried, and the need for e-money is clearly defined and widely agreed upon. But no e-money solution has succeeded in achieving general use. Instead, Internet users are reduced to giving out their credit card numbers over the Web.
Consider the following scenario:                1. A user buys a book from an on-line bookstore.        2. The bookstore sends the user a bill.        3. The user pays the bill from his on-line bank account.        4. The bookstore sends the user the book.        
This is the dream that e-money is supposed to fulfill. Notice that this transaction involves at least two entities, in addition to the user: the bookstore and the bank. How can they be integrated? Currently, the only solution is for the bookstore and the bank to integrate a third-party e-money solution into the back end of each web site. This kind of integration requires the service providers—the bookstore and the bank—to expend resources to do the integration. Doing so will generally preclude any competing integration (such as other e-money services), and will be useless if one party does the integration and not the other. When brought into the real world, in which there are a very large number of merchants and a very large number of banks, the odds of the integration being cost effective are very low.
In general, the user would like to be able to integrate any of his on-line relationships with any other. With respect to e-money, he would like to be able to pay for any on-line service from his on-line bank account—presumably provided by his usual bricks-and-mortar bank.
In addition to providing a user interface paradigm, Internet and World Wide Web technology is beginning to be applied to inter-application communication, a field generally known as Web Services. Though Web Services do not have a user interface, the problems of multi-entity transactions are essentially the same as in the World Wide Web—how do you turn multiple two-party transactions into a single multi-party transaction that better represents the task at hand?
There is thus a widely recognized need for, and it would be highly advantageous to have, a networked computing system devoid of the above limitations.